


A New Liss On Life

by calculatingMinutiae



Series: The Ghost of Glimwood Tangle [10]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Fun with Ghost Logic, Galar Fossils, Gen, Ghost!Allister, Or at least some stuff on ghost logistics, Social Anxiety, Xenobiology, self-care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:49:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22371337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calculatingMinutiae/pseuds/calculatingMinutiae
Summary: Route Six, 2017.“Why can’t you help? You… You made them this way….”“Funding.”Allister tries to get away from it all, and learns a valuable lesson.
Relationships: Onion | Allister & Ukatsu | Cara Liss
Series: The Ghost of Glimwood Tangle [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576204
Comments: 14
Kudos: 77





	A New Liss On Life

**Author's Note:**

> [Cover art](https://2sp00ky.tumblr.com/post/190432663810/why-cant-you-help-you-you-made-them-this)
> 
> Formerly known as "BRB Ghost Science", and the first excuse I've had to put 80s synthpop on [the TGoGT playlist.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0i4fcy5NvY7gnsA9bqhYtc?si=rkLiWylBSJ6y4UCdCLlHhQ)
> 
> This outline has been sitting in my drafts for a while. I do not know how it ended up over 4k words, though. I am sorry, and also you're welcome.

They tell you they want another interview. You do not, have never in your two months of being a Gym Leader, and _will_ (probably) _never_ do interviews, and that is a point on which you are willing to stake your entire professional relationship with the chairman. It’s only because the both of you have a vested interest in you never doing interviews, what with you getting so horrifically nervous that you practically threw up in a reporter’s microphone that got too-too close to your face. You were lucky the resulting _shrug_ you gave her was broadly interpreted as part of your persona, your act, _boy of mystery_ , and not at all the only weak gesture you could make while your legs were still holding you up before bolting to the nearest sink. 

You do not do interviews, and they cannot make you. 

There are so many eyes on you, now, where they never used to see you at all. For one hundred twenty-six years, the only eyes to acknowledge you were Opal’s and those of the pokemon in the Glimwood Tangle, and you could handle that much. You knew them, knew them well, and in most instances trusted them; you could read them loud and clear, but _these_ people. There are so many people in Galar. There are already more than enough in your bustling cliffside town, eyes that look down to you as a ( _secondary,_ thankfully, your sister earning the brunt of the title) role model and ambassador to the rest of the region. It doesn’t help that a good majority of them are on the order of at least half a foot taller than you, surrounding you in the crowd, enveloping you in the sound.

In the stadium, it’s exhilarating. It makes you feel _alive._

Then you step off the pitch, and suddenly your bubble of carefully scripted and balanced control closes in to crush you. They get too close, practically _touching_ you, and all you can do is regret all of the polteageist’s brew you had to drink to keep the constitution to go out there in the first place. You can feel their breath on the back of your neck, watching you, waiting for you to slip up. Waiting for the moment to pounce, for you to say the wrong thing or look the wrong way or smile at the wrong time just enough to be shareable, then viral, then _marketable,_ and you simmer down into whatever component parts of a joke the media machine sifts through and finds compelling enough to forge your identity. You say nothing. You stay behind your mask. You do not have to be any sort of _you,_ because you are your mask and your mask is entirely impartial. You cannot be wrong, in your mask, because you are nothing behind its facade. Nobody can be mad at you. Nobody can _hate_ you. 

You don’t need your mask, out here in nature. The wilds of Route Six are home-that’s-close-to-home, and you’re free to kick up dust and grass to float on the clear mountain air up by the cliff’s edge. Your shoes leave deep footprints in the loose dirt behind you, and you can walk and cry and scream all you like, out here. You can leap to ledges they aren’t willing to risk falling from. You are truly on your own, here, and it is _beautiful._

You keep your mask on anyways. The longer you act like this person you’ve decided to be, the more you like him more than the coward you really are. 

The sea breeze beckons you to take a seat, to stop and rest, because though you might not need a breath the molecules currently acting as your only anchor to this world are starting to separate, and you can’t risk losing anything in the wind. It’s about as good a time as any to stop.

You set up camp.

 _It’s not even a new feeling, really,_ you think as you stir a pot of dry curry for the party. Gengar has decided that this is a perfect opportunity to pick you up to make it easier to stir the curry pot, and part of you too smothered by the rest is indignant about it. You sigh and melt into Gengar’s arms a little. 

The feeling has cropped up before. It’s not capital-D Depression tired, either, though you’d suspected it after Opal first taught you the term. Opal also assured you that Depression also doesn’t generally make people start to fizzle around the edges. You have to say, you’ve got nothing and no clue on the matter, but every time it happens another swig of ecto-tea makes the shaky feeling go away. It makes you solid again, and whole, and you’ve been terrified that it’ll strike you during a match. All those eyes watching you, and you dissolve right before their eyes. 

You’re still stirring even though the curry is long cooked to sufficient, Chandelure blowing at you rather than the flame now. Runerigus scoffs sarcastically your way as it pats out the fire with a bit too rough of hands. 

“Oh… I’m sorry… I-I’ll make a new batch, a-and put some heart in it this time, okay?” He smiles and it’s crooked, his eyes catching the setting sun through the holes in his mask. Dusknoir pats him on the head.

Mimikyu raises the head of its disguise, staring out at a nearby ledge. Its wooden ‘tail’ is at the ready. 

“Seems you could use some help with that curry, huh?”

You flinch, and Gengar lifts you up and away from the curry pot. _You are not ready to deal with this right now._

“Tiny child. You need someone to help you, huh?” 

“‘m not _that_ small,” you mumble into Gengar’s shoulder, who has decided to carry you while the rest of your team turns to face the intruder. 

“Okay, okay, _medium child_. You have a surplus of curry there, do you not?” 

“... Mhmm. Is. Is that all you want?”

“I could help,” says the interloper, a young woman with dirt and mud smeared on her face and mismatched shoes. 

You poke Gengar’s shoulder to ask it to kindly _turn around, please_ , and you scan her over behind your mask. 

“I-I… If you want to… it’s just my team and me. I know ‘s custom to share, I just… didn’t expect anybody to be out here….”

“I could say quite the same to you, she says, rolling a small cart about two-thirds her height over to the campsite. She tosses a half-dozen hondew berries into the pot. 

“Wh-Why’s that?” You tilt your head a little, Gengar not quite leaving you to stir the pot with her. Dusknoir has insisted on doing it for you, at a much steadier pace than the lady’s lackadaisical technique. 

“Because,” she remarks, fanning the flames with her hand where Dusknoir uses a proper fan, “nobody stays out here when they don’t have to, yeah? It is high up and dusty-old and alone. Forgotten place, here.”

“What are you out here for, then?”

“You want a life story,” the woman rolls her eyes, looking at your mask with a disdain that squeezes your heart into a rough paste, only to drop as though it were never there. “... Why not? Not like there is anywhere better to go.”

Dusknoir plates the curry while she sits down by the campfire. Gengar sets you down to warm up.

“Nowhere do they appreciate true genius. Nowhere do they appreciate me… Cara Liss.” 

“Oh… t-terribly sorry, then. Sounds… crummy.”

“Indeed.”

Dusknoir hands Cara Liss a plate, and she nods a little _thank-you_ before picking up her fork. 

“What about your pokemon?” you ask, not thinking twice about the question. 

“What about them?”

“They do hard work… they should get curry first….”

“Ah, these pokemon, they do not work a day in their lives,” says Cara Liss. 

“O-Oh….”

“Well, I _suppose….”_

Cara Liss pulls four pokeballs from her belt, releasing all four of her pokemon at once.

But they look… _wrong._ There is no way around it, these poor souls strike you as viscerally wrong. Your hair twitches in the wind, as do most loose things, at this altitude, but when you close your eyes you can feel it. 

These pokemon look remarkably similar to one another not in silhouette or coloration, but in _full pieces._

These pokemon, these _souls_ have been stitched together from corpses, and you want to scream. The desecrated dead are up and toddling idly about the camp, bumping into eachother, shivering, gasping for breath that does not come. One has its head on upside-down, even, making every move give it a bit of vertigo. Another teeters in constant risk of falling over with no way to push itself back up again. 

“What… what did you _do_ to them?”

“Hmm? You ask what of me, the Great Cara Liss?”

“They’re suffering…."

“Ah,” she says, impartial, spooning out a plate for each amalgam of a monstrosity. 

You stand up, violet rings in the deep black pits of your mask. “What did you do.”

“What I _could,_ medium child, but I cannot help them now,” she sighs, sitting back by the fire. “I want to. I wish I could… but Chairman Rose, see, he will not take them. He told me to bring him new specimens, I bring him new specimens and he does not want them. He tells me, _take them back, Cara Liss. Never in my museum, Cara Liss._ But _all_ of the museums are his! It is ridiculous!”

Dracovish releases a horrible noise as air strains its vocal chords and air slides over its gills. The burbling stops only with the gnashing of fangs and swift disappearance of fresh curry. 

You occupy yourself with feeding your poor, handless Corsola. 

“Why can’t you help? You… You made them this way….”

“Funding.” She looks up at you, and does not hesitate. You squirm a little in your seat under her glare. “All the projects need money, medium child. It is why I started paleontology in the first place, lots of digging, lots of money. Now Rose decides he does not want more digging and there is no more money to study the dead of things, huh? There is no interest in Draco, or Zolt, or Arcto or Vish. The kids do not _like_ old things, he tells me. So I say, _well,_ if it is interest that you want, Mr. Rose, it is interest you will have,”

“What did you want to do, then?”

“I am a biomedical engineer. I built this machine, and with it these creatures have life, thanks to me, Cara Liss.”

“E-ven though the… parts, don’t fit together?”

“It is all very complicated. Maybe too complicated for a medium child… but yes. I have used my skills to change the technology from overseas and make it even better, I filled in the gaps and these pokemon, they roam Galar once more.”

“It’s… _incredible,_ ” you say, though it isn’t a compliment. 

“But no ticket into medical school,” she sighs, hands holding her head up. “And now that the Chairman has rejected Cara Liss, the scientific _community_ shuns me, Cara Liss….”

“W-Well, maybe you need a change of focus. You’re plenty brilliant, maybe you just need somethin’ t-to show it?”

“Ah, an _application_ ,” she says, breath catching as she imagines the sheer number of possibilities out there.

Both of you have completely neglected to look the way of Chandelure, who seems to be having a time and a half hunting down the icy Arctozolt. The poor thing squawks as Chandelure drags it by the tail, shimmering with a faint purple light.

“C-Chandelure, no! Stop that, stop that right now!” You jump to your feet, grabbing the specter by the arms as it still glows. Arctozolt takes off, straight into Cara Liss’s pokeball. In fact, the world seems to speed up for just a moment as the other three are recalled into their balls as well, a bucket of ice water dropped over your head as you realize, _woah, Chandelure could have done some damage._ And the creature is _already_ suffering!

Cara taps you on the shoulder, and you practically jump out of your skin. 

“You. Medium boy. I do not care if you are a gym leader or not, that looked dangerous.”  
  
“‘S nothin', really… probably just wanted a snack, is all. But we do _not_ snack on friends,” you scold Chandelure, taking a step back away from her. 

“It could have stolen away your soul,” she says, without an ounce of facetiousness, grabbing for your arm to tug away from your companion.

“I-It wouldn’t do that… she’s a troublemaker, b-but not gonna go _that_ far….”

“Still, you should rest. Have some curry, so not worry about your pokemon so much. They can take care of themselves, huh?”

You shake your head, your party gathered around the campfire and eating their curry. Mimikyu foregoes its portion to sit at your feet and coo, waiting for you to pick it up. 

“And why not! I am not letting a child die in my presence, Cara Liss may be down and out but no manslaughterer is she!”

You flinch, and your frame starts to fragment. Mimikyu falls through your fingers. Cara stares at you, in equal parts awe and horror.

“W... What _happened_ to you?”

You, reluctantly, sit and explain. 

"You're a ghost. A really, really-real ghost."

"You can't say a word about it to anyone."

"And why _not?!_ It's remarkable, no, it's _vital_ , why the whole region, no, _the world_ —"

You try to curl up out of existence, but alas, you can’t; but Mimikyu _can_ gesture with its wooden tail at the throat of its disguise and Gengar looming over the pair of you, at least.

"... Oh." 

Cara sits up straighter, nodding to the pokemon in hopes they will stand down. They do not.

"Right, then. Secret's safe with Cara Liss. Although...."

"... I-is that a good, 'although...'?"

"Yes. Yes, a very good 'although'. Idea-making." She smiles a smile you’ve only ever seen creep up on Opal’s face. If you could feel your chest, you’d also feel it drop. "Can it do that again?"

"Um, do... what?"

"Chandelure. Drain Arctozolt."

"W-What, no! It'll harm it!"

"And how do you know that?"

"Ghost pokemon can take the life force out of other living things... it isn't evil, or anything to be ashamed of, but you wouldn't want an arcanine chewing on Arctozolt outside of battle either...."

"But _how_?"

"Does it drain the life force?"

“Yes. _Tell me.”_

"...Gengar says it just comes naturally. Like breathing... you just. Reach for it, and take hold, and don't let go."

"Fascinating. Vague, but _fascinating_. If I found a willing subject, would your pokemon be willing to run some tests?"

You look over to your party members, and call them to your side. "Uh… I don't know, would you?"

The team lines up. Mimikyu and Gengar are more than happy to have dinner for capital-S Science, while the psychopomp Dusknoir finds it abhorrent. Runerigus is ambivalent, but when has it _ever_ been strongly opinionated, while Chandelure is swinging wildly with anticipation. Young Corsola, on the other hand, is too nervous with the prospect of being _watched_ to even process the assignment. Polteageist hasn’t taken its eyes off of Cara Liss, and does not trust a word she has to say. 

“Hm,” you hum, a noncommittal wiggly hand-gesture as your response. “Take that as a ‘kind of’.”

*

Not half an hour later, Allister and Cara have hooked up a few Machines That Beep to an unperturbed Snorlax. It hasn’t so much as flinched as, one by one, most of his party drains just a touch of its life force. It’s been a great sport about the whole thing, really. He isn’t completely sure what she’s learning, but she certainly is taking notes at the speed of faster than he expected. 

He glares at Gengar as it lingers too long around Snorlax’s head, so tempted to eat its dream. A single look freezes it in its tracks. 

Cara clips her pencil to the binding of her notebook. "It's brilliant. An ab, so-lutely, _brilliant_ adaptation," she says, smacking the page with the back of her hand. “They’re using a microneedling technique, only by manipulating their physical forms. The ghosts are so amorphous in structure, being mostly energy, that they’re just _extending themselves_ in to penetrate nerve cells without damaging tissue beyond minor acute inflammation, it’s staggering. I’m not sure how they’re collecting metabolic inputs, but the concentration gradient is in their favor… I’m fairly certain they’re rerouting the host’s action potentials to spur on further cellular respiration within themselves, and the worst it’s brought on is _chills?_ Staggering. Absolutely staggering….”

He phases out about halfway through. Granted, when last he knew, the scientific community was still diagnosing hysteria and treating colds with hard drugs, so one might forgive him for having absolutely no idea what she’s talking about and drawing little pictures in the dirt instead.

She seems to have noticed. “You know 'it's free real estate'?"

"Yeah… ?”

"Ghosts see energy that's already in somebody's body that they can get to. That energy? Is free real estate. Then they use the house to make more, smaller houses."

" _Ooooh…._ "

She nods. “Can you do it too?”

“... You _can’t_ mean….”

“I can. And I do.”

“....”

“Allister?”

“... I’ve wanted to,” he mumbles into his sleeve. 

“Louder, dear?”

“I think so.” He shrugs.

“You don’t know?”

“N-Not for sure….”

“ _Try._ ”

“I-I….”

Mimikyu bristles, practically a hiss, but he pats the head of its disguise. It’s very fluffy.

“I can’t do that, Cara.”

“Oh? Why not, huh?"

“It… it wouldn’t be, right?” 

"Your pokemon do it just fine"

"They need to… or they won't be healthy. I offer them some of mine, but it doesn't do a lot…."

"An' you don't see anything wrong with that?"

"I'm… _y'know_ , of course it wouldn't be… the same. I'm just sorry I can't do better for them, mostly…."

"Allister, ghost pokemon hunt eachother all the time. I don't think being dead has much to do with it," she says, triple underlining a few things in her notes.

"I-I'm not a pokemon, am I. 'm human, and humans aren't supposed'ta hurt eachother."

"Snorlax is doing just fine," she says, Snorlax barely acknowledging. "I think the only one hurting here is you."

"…."

"It's in the way you walk, the way you don’t eat curry, the way your team is babying you…. Just the way your team looks at you. I think they know something is wrong."

"… What am I supposed to do about it, then? Without bein' a terrible person."

"You told me yourself your pokemon aren't terrible for doing what they need to survive."

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, flexing his fingers just to remember they’re still attached. He takes a breath, and forces out the words. "… Opal was wrong, talking to people is a crummy idea… good luck with your micro-beetling… _thing_."

She watches him shuffle aside, recalling all but Mimikyu back into their balls. It's one thing for her to be out here, an academic reject, careless and pointless standing up among the sand. It's another for the _youngest gym leader in Galarian history, who is frankly on top of the world right now_ to be silently letting himself fall apart. He has everything ahead of him, so it seems. Nevermind the ghost bit, he's no less of a child with a future.

"You don't have to let yourself hurt, you know." The Great Cara Liss offers her hand to the air, wrist-up.

He stops, and turns back to her. "What if I can't stop it? W-What if I mess it up, a-and I can't let go, and I take _everything_ instead, I'm already here when _I shouldn't be_. Like your fossils. It's a waste."

"No, you won't, and no, it isn't. You forget I'm human too, you know,” she steps towards him. “Not every decision is all up to you. It'd be my fault too."

He hesitates, biting his lip until it bleeds. It bleeds black, ghastly sludge that drips onto, into, _through_ his fingers. A concerned Mimikyu pokes the button of Gengar’s ball, then another, then another. 

Allister picks his head up, and takes her hand. 

His skin, pale as bone and practically devoid of color, takes on the same purple sheen that Chandelure did. Cara can’t help but watch as Allister’s eyes open wider, as he stands up taller, as he cracks his back and rubs his eyes with his free hand. 

He looks indistinguishable from the living. 

Well. Save that, when he lets go, he bounces on the balls of his feet like a child his age ought, slammed in the face with a sugar high. _In fact,_ the mood strikes, the wind cascading down the cliffs a call to action instead of a sign of danger, _I think I’m gonna act like it too._

All of his pokemon are confused and mildly concerned when he starts playing with his sleeves more than he usually does, from idle to a driven fidget, looking around and shaking at the knees. He needs to _run._ To sprint, and jog, and let himself spin and fall and climb and take his mask off to feel the _wind in his face_ , and it’s wonderful _._ It’s exciting, it’s _exhilarating,_ the tears rolling down his face feel warm on cool and hot and cold and the sensations are so much _stronger_ now, and _he_ is stronger, now, and for once he doesn’t loathe being confined, locked into his own form. It’s… it’s….

Too much. Gengar catches him mid-fall and breathing very, _very_ heavily, wheezing and coughing from all the dust he’s managed to kick up. He’s ignored every signal his body has tried to give him to _stop, please, before you hurt something._ He hasn’t felt them in so long, he’d forgotten what they meant. To him, it’s just another sensation to experience, breathlessness. He has no regrets as he falls asleep slung over Gengar’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Polteageist re-fastens his mask. The team sorts itself back out into their respective balls, and Gengar collects everyone in preparation to head back to Stow-on-side. Before it leaves, it turns to face her.

Even without being a spirit medium, she’s fairly certain the motion it’s making means _thank you._

“... Right, then. No problem, yeah? Always happy to help the gym leader… or, even just a tired kid.” Gengar laughs, though it’s soft and quiet where one would expect a dose of menace. 

Gengar carries Allister home.

*

With her new focus of research, Cara Liss proposes a new medical device to Macro Cosmos with the potential to save countless lives. By using the natural model of ghost pokemon, Cara has been able to isolate a microneedling mechanism that will allow doctors to inject patients with medication just by sticking a patch onto the area they need to access without the risk of inflammation and pain that’s come before it. The new technology has opened the door wide open for a number of applications, including a mechanism to direct electrotherapy directly to areas of the brain that will allow doctors to relieve symptoms in patients without doing more damage than they fix. It’s great for morale, and great for the people of Galar, and then the world.

Needless to say, Cara has been accepted back into the scientific community. 

She still hangs around Route Six, admittedly, even if it’s only to study the yamask who live there. It’s become her mission to see what else ghost pokemon can teach about the past, yes, but also the present; she’s hoping to one day restore her creations, or at the very least to free them from their suffering without the long-drawn process of dying a second time. She’s had no such epiphany, today.

Although she _does_ see a familiar mask in the near-distance. 

“Allister,” she smiles, approaching with one hand held up, already wary of the Gengar and Mimikyu at his side. Gengar smiles.

“Oh… H-Hi Cara,” he lifts his head higher, mask slightly lifted above his chin and putting his fork down into his curry. “H-ow are you?”  
  
“Just fine, medium child,” she nods. “More than fine. I have a job again,” she bows her head, hands raised and beckoning for applause she… does, get. Softly. Hesitantly, from him. “Yes, yes, you see it is all thanks to me, the Great Cara Liss… and, a little motivation from you.”

“Glad I could help…” he puts his head back down, thinking for a moment. “D. Do you want any curry? We’ve got kind of a lot….” 

She blinks in stunned silence for a moment. “Ah. If you say so,” she says, sitting across from him. “Though I have a little something for you too, if you want it. I was wondering when I’d see you to give it, huh?”

She hands him a little pin, and dishes herself out a bowl of curry.

“W-Wow…,” he turns it over and over in his hands. “What is it."

“A Junior Lab Assistant pin.”

He pins it to his suspenders. 

“It’s not a real position, but our lab has a 3-D printer. I thought you might like it. Kids like stuff like this, huh?”

He nods, nods, nods-nods-nods. It’s such a strange _relief_ to know it isn’t “real”, isn’t setting expectations on his shoulders, but instead a little token of friendship. Perhaps people aren’t all bad, after all. 

The next time a reporter sticks a microphone in his face, he shakes his head, points to his little black-and-white badge of honor, and keeps his head high as he walks away.

**Author's Note:**

> I know her name is supposed to be similar to "careless", but also 1) with some of the canon verbal tics she has I read it to rhyme with "me" and cannot un-hear it and 2) can I get a hell yeah from my BMEs in the back?


End file.
